A friendly company that needs more focus - Anonymous employee Access Employee Review

Thank you for this great review. I appreciate the you have focus here...and, well, I also appreciate that you think I am responsive and friendly - both of those items are important to me. It is also good to know you 1) feel your compensation is competitive, 2) understand the benefits of working for a well-financed organization (which we are) and 3) appreciate the opportunity to telecommute, which is available for certain positions. The cons and advice to management you list are helpful to hear so directly. We will continue to investigate better health plans. This is a challenging area as costs here continue to rise, but I know that benefits are critically important to Access team members and their families. We will continue to search for better plans, which is a never-ending effort. Succinctly put, I know that a lower deductible is important to most Access team members and we will continue to do more research here, specifically. We are on it, but this is a challenge that I openly admit frustrates me. We try to balance covering individuals and trying to completely cover as many families as possible, so it is a very hard balance to strike, but we will continue to focus on it. On this topic, we will be doing a full benefits survey prior to our next benefits enrollment so that we know where to concentrate our investments in improvements. PLEASE participate in that survey. The fact that you believe we have conflicting priorities is, I believe, a function of our need to communicate better, which is one of your cons and is also in your advice to management. I believe that we have clear priorities, but if you don't...well, that is on me for not communicating better and not installing a process for better communication. We have worked and are working hard this year to improve communication, including my personal videos (one example is here: https://vimeo.com/261397192), but we will keep improving here, too. For reference, our priorities are our F.A.C.T.S.: - Financial Performance (meeting/exceeding top-line and bottom-line budgeted numbers) - Access Way (culture initiatives and meeting our vision) - Client Growth - Team Member Development - Safety and Operational Excellence Our strategic pillars were just revisited yesterday (not exaggerating here) by our executive team and we agreed on some changes to align our pillars better with our priorities. Our strategic pillars, as they existed yesterday before our meeting, are: 1) Drive Core Services Organic Growth 2) Develop a High-Growth Software and Conversion Services Business 3) Complete Focused and Strategic Acquisitions 4) Operational Excellence through Performance Management The conversation yesterday – and what will be published in the coming weeks/months – was around creating better alignment between our priorities and our pillars. There should – and will be – better alignment between them. The next version will have better alignment and be more succinct, plus we will communicate it better, you have my word. Finally, regarding our software business and our various product lines, the fact that our plans to thoughtfully reduce our product lines and EOL some of our products isn’t apparent to you only further illustrates our need to communicate better. We have a much greater focus here and have discussed our plans to focus our efforts and investment here to fewer products, I thought, at all levels in the organization. Lesson (continued to be) learned: communicate, communicate, communicate and then communicate some more. Thanks, again, for your very thoughtful and direct review. As always, please reach me at ralston@accesscorp.com with any questions or concerns. Thanks, Rob